Viciously Arranged Love

1. Sienna

CHAPTER ONE

SIENNA

My fiancé had stood me up.

Again.

I stood in the foyer of the Harlan Conservatory while the charity gala carried on behind closed ballroom doors. The string music had become a muffled hum through the walls, mixed with the low, expensive murmur of people who knew how to whisper without ever looking as though they were whispering.

I glanced toward the main entrance again.

The staff had stopped checking on me ten minutes ago because I kept smiling at them as though I wasn’t humiliated, and they were too well trained to make me feel worse. One of the girls near the check-in table caught my eye and offered me another tiny, sympathetic nod. I gave her one back.

My cheeks hurt.

Jamison Crow was twenty minutes late to a seated charity dinner where half of Harlan had already noticed I was alone in the foyer, waiting for him like a little fool in satin.

I shifted my weight in my heels and pretended to admire the floral installation climbing the staircase. The Harlan families loved flowers. Thousands of dollars of them, arranged into enormous displays so everyone could admire them for a few hours before they started dying.

My dress was pale blue tonight. A little too hopeful, maybe. I had picked it because I wanted something that wouldn’t make Jamison look annoyed when he saw me.

I’d originally put on sheer gloves, but Jamison didn’t like anything fussy. I’d spent twenty minutes in front of the mirror wondering if sheer counted as fussy before taking them off at the last minute.

The ridiculous part was that he probably wouldn’t notice my hands.

Finally, the front doors opened.

The atmosphere in the foyer changed before I even saw him.

That was the thing about Crows.

Jamison walked in surrounded by a wall of men in black suits. They tried to become furniture and failed because no one built furniture that looked capable of breaking a man’s arm in three calm movements.

And in the middle of them was my fiancé.

His black suit had been tailored over heavy muscle, and black ink covered his hands before disappearing beneath his cuffs.

More climbed his throat above his collar.

One hand held his phone to his ear as he walked, his expression dark enough to make everyone within ten feet suddenly remember somewhere else they needed to look.

“Then fix it before I get there,” he snapped. “I don’t care what he signed. I care what he can prove. Get the file off their server and put Reed on the south account.”

The girl at check-in lowered her eyes. Two men near the staircase stopped talking.

One of Jamison’s security detail leaned toward him, but Jamison lifted a hand without looking and silenced him.

I swallowed. My terrifying, tattooed, always-angry fiancé looked as though he’d been dragged straight out of a war room and forced into a charity gala. I smoothed my dress once and walked toward him.

Because that was what I did. I always went to Jamison, even when he was late, mean and looked straight through me.

His men noticed me first. Two shifted apart just enough to let me through, and I gave them a small smile as I stepped between them.

“Hi,” I said softly.

Jamison kept talking.

I stopped beside him and waited while he finished whatever was more important than the woman he’d left standing alone for twenty minutes. He could have looked at me. He could have acknowledged that half the ballroom had watched me wait for him.

Instead, he dragged the call out.

“Tell him I’m not repeating myself. If Harrington wants a meeting, he can wait until I decide he deserves one.”

I watched the hard line of his profile while he spoke. Dark stubble covered his jaw, and the tattoos along his neck disappeared beneath the crisp black collar of his shirt. Everything about Jamison looked hostile, even dressed for charity.

Eventually, he lowered the phone.

“Hi, Jamjam.” I smiled up at him.

Jamison was extremely scary, which was precisely why I’d given him the nickname. It certainly wasn’t because it suited him. I’d decided years ago that Jamjam made him more approachable.

It hadn’t worked, but I remained committed.

His eyes moved over me, and I watched him force something down. Rage, and impatience. I never really knew with Jamison.

I held out my hand.

“Hand, please.”

His gaze dropped to my palm.

I kept it there.

I’d started doing this when I was eighteen and he was already frightening enough to make grown men step backward. Sometimes he arrived at events with blood on his knuckles. Somewhere along the way, I’d decided that if people saw us touching, maybe they would remember he was human.

That, and these events terrified me.

“Hand, please, Jamjam,” I repeated softly.

His jaw flexed, and for one horrible second, I thought he might refuse in front of everyone.

Then his hand dropped into mine.

Tattooed fingers closed around my smaller ones without any gentleness, and he started walking before I was ready. I stumbled half a step before catching up, his grip tightening instinctively even though his pace never changed.

Jamison didn’t adjust for anyone.

Apparently, that included me.

I lifted my free hand and smiled at the staff as he practically dragged me toward the ballroom.

The doors opened, and hundreds of faces turned.

The chairwoman paused mid-speech before recovering with a smile too bright to be real and continuing her remarks about medical funding for children’s recovery wards. Someone near the back whispered.

Jamison didn’t seem to notice.

Our table was near the front because Crows were always seated near the front.

They owned too much and frightened too many people to be placed anywhere else.

Jamison’s brothers were already waiting for us.

Marcel sat with his wife, Emmie, tucked beside him, while Harrison occupied the other side of the table with a dark-haired woman in red.

His mouth tilted the second he saw us approaching.

He’d been waiting for this disaster to entertain him.

Emmie smiled at me as we reached the table.

Jamison dropped my hand. My fingers stayed suspended between us for half a second before I remembered to lower them.

“Brother.” Marcel glanced at his watch. “You’re twenty-eight minutes late.”

Jamison pulled out his own chair and sat. “I had business.”

“You always do.”

“Then stop scheduling charity dinners when you know.”

Harrison leaned back in his chair. “But that would be every night.”

Jamison shot him a look.

Harrison smiled wider.

I reached for my own chair and pulled it out. The legs scraped across the floor loudly enough to make my skin heat, and I sat quickly, smoothing my dress over my lap while Jamison immediately started talking to Marcel.

Ports. Contracts. Something about an account. I waited for a break in the conversation, but one didn’t come. Eventually, I turned toward Jamison anyway.

“Hand, please.”

His head moved slowly in my direction. “What?”

“Hand, please,” I repeated, as gently as I could.

His eyes narrowed.

I kept smiling. Maybe it was humiliating to ask for crumbs in public. The smallest proof that he remembered I belonged beside him instead of three feet beyond the edge of his attention. But if I didn’t ask, he wouldn’t give it to me.

Jamison reluctantly placed his hand in mine.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

He looked away before I’d even finished speaking.

I settled his hand in my lap and held it between both of mine. Black ink covered his fingers down to the knuckles, blending into the larger tattoo across his hand. Crow marks. Old Harlan lines. Symbols I’d traced in my head a thousand times before I’d ever dared touch them.

My thumb moved over one near his index finger.

“How was rehearsal, sunshine?” Harrison asked.

I looked across the table. “Good. Really good, actually. We had our last performance last night.”

Emmie immediately turned toward me. “Your last one? Sienna, I wanted to come.”

“I got stuck in Villain for three days,” she added.

I smiled. “Oh, Emmie, that’s so sweet of you. Yes, it was the final one. The theatre was nearly full.

“Stuck in Villain,” Marcel repeated dryly. “Emmie took a liking to a stray dog outside one of my hotels.”

“He was limping,” Emmie protested. “And a puppy.”

“It was a fully grown mastiff.”

Emmie looked at him. “He had a baby face.”

Harrison laughed. “The dog slipped his lead, ran through the hotel kitchen and disappeared into a restricted service tunnel. Marcel locked down three city blocks because his wife went after it.”

“I wasn’t leaving him down there.”

“You crawled beneath an active freight line,” Marcel said.

Her nose wrinkled.

“And then Marcel refused to let her leave Villain until the dog had been cleared by two veterinarians, the tunnel had been searched and her security detail completed remedial training,” Harrison finished.

Emmie lifted her glass. “His name is Theodore. He lives with us now.”

Marcel’s expression remained flat. “He destroyed my office.”

“He was just anxious.”

“Was he anxious while he ate my chair”

“He didn’t like it.” Emmie nodded seriously. “I didn’t like it either.”

Marcel’s attention shifted to her immediately. His fingers moved to her neck, tracing lightly beneath her ear as his entire expression softened.

“Baby, why didn’t you tell me?”

Emmie blushed. “It’s your chair.”

“And you sit on Daddy’s lap while I’m in it.”

He kissed her temple, slow and familiar, his thumb moving over the necklace fitted closely around her throat.

The piece was beautiful. Warm rose gold formed narrow interlocking links with, deep green emeralds circling the centre with tiny white diamonds set around each stone. They caught the ballroom lights whenever she moved, too clean and perfectly matched to have come from an ordinary jewellery house.

To everyone else, it probably looked like another extravagant Crow gift. A beautiful necklace chosen for Marcel’s wife, expensive enough to remind the room how much money sat at our table.

I knew better.